Silent Quit: Is It Subversive Response To Corporate Culture?

Appearing analogous to the passive aggressive response in relationships, silent quit is the big new wave that is sweeping across corporations around the world.

The danger signals of overworked people, and underpaid employees, burnout and the like often go unnoticed in organisations.

Not all systems are perfect, but post-pandemic, workspaces around the world have come under severe pressure from employees that are feeling increasingly short-changed.

Among the various ways they have responded, comes a new way, which could prove to be a serious challenge for HR. It’s called the ‘Silent Quit’.

The Silent Quit, unlike the Big Quit, does not involve employees simply resigning and leaving, but as the name suggests is more insidious. In this form of quitting the employee decides to quit internally, while continuing to work externally still. This results in the employee ‘zoning out’ and resorting to cutting down on both involvement and work output.

The danger is this form of quitting is its ‘silent’ nature – and the fact that it can seriously hamper and impact productivity before getting identified, if at all.

While it might well be a response mechanism of people under high duress and no or little alternative, there are other views on ‘silent quitting’, which simply see it as a form of disloyalty and a reaction, which is the beginning of a self-destructive spiral.

HUMAN FACTOR’S POINT OF VIEW

We believe that burnout is as much the organisations responsibility as it is of the individual. While individuals resort to various ways of responding – which is a defense mechanism and survival technique, organisations can easily pre-empt this by using robust processes that can track both sentiment and performance. Future-ready HR-tech solutions can easily be deployed to do this – from continuous performance management (not performance appraisals) to real-time sentiment mapping, empowering leaders to help where help is needed.   

Read more about this on Indian Express in the article Quiet Quitting: Why It’s Happening, its Impact on Companies And Employees”